Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Yes, I actually finished Tennis Shoes Book 12 on Saturday. Now I'm furiously rewriting and cleaning it up so that it's ready for publication. I attached a copy to my publisher, but except for their expected reply of, "Thanks! We got it! Looking forward to reading it!" they didn't have much else to say. Thus, I can't offer anyone any predictions as to when it might be on the shelves.

I think I'll go with the title Drums of Desolation unless my publisher strenuously feels otherwise. The title has grown on me. Which is not to say I'd have any problem if it were titled Thorns of Glory, Pt. 1. That's the title I stared at all the months as I was writing it. But Drums of Desolation is unique and quickly distinguishes the book.

Again, it's one of my longer Tennis Shoes books. Doesn't seem to matter though. No matter how long I make 'em, readers are no less frustrated when they read that awful "To be continued..." notice on the last page. Be comforted that I've already started Book 13. I hope to complete the manuscript by the time this one reaches the shelves. In any case, I won't let any other projects interrupt it.

Thanks for your patience (or impatience)! :)

Sincerely,
Chris Heimerdinger

Here's an excerpt from the book that helps readers understand how it ties in with both Sorcerers and Seers and Escape from Zarahemla. The narrator of this excerpt is Harry:Huracan was back!

Her appearance was astonishing, like a
warm surge of electricity to the heart—especially at such a dark and dismal
moment. But even miracles generally had explanations. These woods around the
lower slopes of the Hill Shim were isolated by plains, rivers, and grasslands.
How could Huracan have slipped through hundreds of thousands of Lamanite
soldiers? There was only one answer. She’d abandoned Antionum and his
contingent of warriors from Seibalche—and recently!—likely within the last few
hours. Had she spotted us as our delegation marched toward Shim? Ahh, what did
it matter? Heck, if we really wanted to find out how she got here, all we had
to do was ask her!

The
jaguar bowled over Gidgiddonihah as he reached out to embrace her. Gid’s
laughter was like that of a young boy as he rolled on the ground. It was a
sweet sound.

“No
licking!” cried Gid as she made several attempts to remove the skin of his
cheek with her sandpaper tongue. Next Huracan accosted Apollus, who also
received her affections with joy. I knew that I was next. Rafa squawked in
protest and took to the air. I braced myself for the “bear hug” of a jaguar.

Instead,
Huracan circled around my legs like an oversized housecat. At that instant,
something else in the woods caught my eye. Someone stood in the trees at almost
the precise place where the jaguar had emerged. It was a boy.

He
stared at us, nervous and concerned, but doing everything in his power to hide
it. The boy was dressed like a common Nephite, but his features . . . were
different. They were not Nephite.

Moroni
also saw him. “Child,” he said firmly but kindly. “Who are you? What are you
doing here?”

He
replied in a stutter. “I-I was, uh, traveling with the jaguar.”

At
that moment Gid returned to his feet. He looked at the boy. At first he stared
at him with the same curiosity as the rest of us. Then the intensity of his
stare magnified tenfold. The old warrior’s jaw dropped like a grand piano from
a rooftop. His eyes became as wide as ostrich eggs.

“I
know this boy!” he proclaimed.

We
turned to Gid, perplexed.

“You
know him?” I asked, wondering if he’d
meant something more symbolic like, “I know his race” or “I know what kind of
boy he is” or even “I know where he comes from.” I’d known Gidgiddonihah for a
long time—many, many years. I’d have thought that in all those years a boy such
as this would have been mentioned. Gid had never said a word. Yet Gid had meant
exactly what he said.

“Yes,”
he confirmed. “I know him. He saved me in a way you cannot imagine. I know him
very, very well.”

Gid noticed the boy was also
gaping, utterly nonplussed. I think he would have liked to have embrace the teenager as
a friend, but the kid appeared so disturbed that Gid was content to
place a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Brock, isn't it?" Gid
asked. "Brock McConnell?"

In an unsteady voice, Brock inquired,
"Gidgiddonihah?"

Gid put his other hand on the
boy's opposite shoulder to steady him. "Yes," he confirmed.
"Gracious, boy! How did you get here? Where is your sister? How long ago
did you arrive?"

He opened and closed his mouth
like a goldfish. He was still trying to wrap his head around an
incomprehensible reality. He certainly wasn't ready to answer Gid's cannonade
of questions. Brock was 13 or 14, lanky, with short-cropped brown hair with a
kind of mullet, a throw-back to the 80s, except that the mullet was rounded off like a watermelon slice. His eyes blinked tightly, rapidly, as if trying to
rouse himself from a dream.

He asked haltingly, "What . .
happened . . . to you?"

Gid leaned back, realizing for the
first time how shocking his appearance must have been. "I got old,"
he said flatly, squinting as if to emphasize the crow's feet.

"How?" asked Brock incredulously. "I saw you yesterday!"

"Yesterday?" Gid sighed
wearily and glanced at Moroni who'd remained close by with Gilgal and a couple
other captains. Gid seemed to find all this time travel nonsense irksome. Gid was
a simple man and he liked simple explanations. Moroni's son, Moronihah, as well as
his father, Mormon, and the other members of the Nephite delegation, were crossing the nearby stream to combine forces with the
contingent of a thousand Nephite warriors that had been waiting for us at the foot of the
hill. My Uncle Garth had joined them. Mormon's mind was beset with more distressing matters than the appearance of a "tame" jaguar and a teenage boy. The fate of two traitors: Judge Tugaloth and Judge Moriantumr. Not
to mention the annihilation of their race in a battle that would promptly begin
in less than two days.

Zenephi, the corrupt and merciless
Chief Judge of the Nephites, had been slain only moments before. He'd attempted
to betray the Nephite leaders into enemy hands, deliver them up like roasted pigs with the customary apples in their mouths, hoping that in return he
might receive some kind of prestigious post in the "new order" of
Cumorah's conquerors. Unfortunately for Zenephi, his treacherous proposal was
roundly rejected by Fireborn, the military commander of Teotihuacan, and by
Teotihuacan's king, whose name was Spearthrower Owl. They'd expressed no interest
in establishing any kind of "new order" of government among the
Nephites. They wanted only one thing: the destruction of every breathing man,
woman, and child of Nephite birth.

Zenephi's efforts to
single-handedly deliver up the Nephite leadership to imprisonment or execution
was also rejected by Eagle-Sky-Jaguar, the newly-anointed Lamanite king of
Tikal, who the rest of us knew by his less-formal name, Lamanai. Lamanai's rival from
the southern highlands also favored annihilation. He was called Sa'abkan, and his kingdom of the Earth-Stone encompassed the land of Zarahemla which had once been the territory of the Nephites. The sentiment of genocide was also supported by the Lamanite kings of the Cloud Mountains and the Weeping
Forests. All Lamanite and Gadianton rulers had chosen death over diplomacy.
They wanted to wipe the Nephite scourge off the map.

A half hour earlier, as we'd descended the slopes of
the Hill Shim, nerves had been very tightly wound. Everyone in
the Nephite delegation knew that the Chief Judge had betrayed them. The spring
soon snapped and within minutes Zenephi was dead. Several of us, among them Mormon, Moroni,Moronihah, Shem, Comnor, Lamah, Apollus and
me, had all tried to protect him, but the wrath of captains like Gilgal, Jeneum
and others could not be restrained. Arrows zinged past us, piercing Zenephi's
body. The mob's fury had prevailed.

Judge Tugaloth and Judge Moriantumr would
have been murdered as well, but Moroni bravely stood before their would-be
executioners and proclaimed that he would die with them if the slaughter
continued. He appealed to their humanity, insisting their actions only proved
that Lord Fireborn was right when he'd called the Nephites as
"monsters and vermin." Moroni wanted their fate to be
decided by the Nephite people. He ordered Gilgal and the
other impassioned lynch-men to march ahead of their group.
The mob finally backed down. They marched across the stream and northward
toward the gates of the city named for the man they'd just slain. Captains like
Shem, Comnor, Lamah, and Moronihah, were now frog-marching Tugaloth and
Moriantumr to Mormon's headquarters. Gilgal, however,
lingered back. He'd seen and heard many curious and suspicious things over
the last several weeks. He might have thought that Brock might reveal answers
to certain mysteries that he should have left well enough alone.

Moroni looked eastward. He clearly
wanted to catch up to his father and his son, now on the opposite side of the
stream. Nevertheless, he turned back and asked Gidgiddonihah, "You know
this boy?"

"Yes," said Gid.
"And his sister."

"Where did you meet them?"

Gid hesitated. "I . . . met them before we arrived at the ruins of
Desolation."

Moroni gave Brock another
once-over. He looked at me while simultaneously asking Gid, "Is he a
Nephite?"

Moroni knew that I'd been with Gid
prior to our reunion at Desolation—the site where Gid and
Apollus had fought (almost) to the death—so I realized Moroni was also asking
this question of me. I smiled at Gid, but in a non-committal way, as if I was
content to let him try to answer Moroni's question without assistance.

I was no fool. This kid looked
about as "Nephite" as an Alpine goat herder. But to Moroni, the name
"Nephite" wasn't merely racial. Sure, there were many Nephites who
tried to make it racial, but like his
father, Moroni considered it a cultural designation. A religious identity.
That's how his ancestors had viewed it for three hundred years. They
wanted others to see it that way as well. To Mormon the name implied that the
man was a follower of Christ, while "Lamanite" or "Gadianton" designated an apostate or
backslider, no matter their racial origins.

For all practical purposes, I noted very few physical differences between
Nephites and Lamanites. That is to say, I noticed great varieties of physical differences. Since the days of Christ's appearance and during several centuries of relative peace there had much mixing
among the tribes and kinships. Differences now related to how the
tribes dressed, the style of their tattoos, and how they behaved.

Still, Brock was an anomaly.
Nothing about the boy's physical features said Nephite, Lamanite or any other local "-ite." His clothing was ancient
in style, although terribly out-of-fashion. I vaguely remembered these patterns and weavings from when I was a kid, living in a different
Nephite era—the century when the Savior had visited the temple at Bountiful.
Modern Nephites would have labeled his clothing as provincial—backwards. The dead giveaway about Brock's true origin was by his shoes. Pure 21st century: Adidas Barricades. This left no doubt: the kid was a
time traveler.

I couldn't fathom where Gid had
met him. I'd always thought that Gid's only experience with
time-travelers were members of my immediate family. Or close
associates like Apollus, Pagag, Mary, Micah, and Jesse. However, something
deep down had always suggested that this idea didn't quite gel. Even when I was ten-years-old,
traveling with Gid by canoe or riding with him on the shoulders of Rachel, the
mammoth, I'd always found it odd—and comforting—that Gidgiddonihah had never
questioned our origin. He'd never asked my father or uncle about the crazy
things they said or out-of-sync events that occurred around us. Gid instinctively knew not to ask, like a
professional butler who does his job discreetly and ignores the eccentricities of those he serves.
Gid was a warrior. He was our bodyguard. It was a job he relished and did especially well.

Come to think of it, this was the
first time I'd ever seen him "tap dance" to protect the secrets of
time-travelers.

"Yes," Gid said to
Moroni. "He is a Nephite. Not
from these parts, but his ancestors traveled northward in the days of
the great migrations. He is from a placed called—"

Gid had forgotten the name. Or pretended to forget it (if he'd ever
known it to begin with). He looked to Brock for the answer.

"L-Los Angeles," Brock
replied.

I learned later Brock
should've said St. George, Utah. Anyway, the kid felt a greater connection to Los Angeles.

Moroni liked the name. "Place
of the angels," he repeated approvingly.

Smooth, I thought.
I think my dad and Uncle had used the old "ancestor-who-migrated-north" line to explain their origins more times than I could count. Gid had obviously learned from the best.